• BillyClark@piefed.socialEnglish
    149·
    6 hours ago

    Many people see the word “range” inside of “ranger” and mindlessly assume that it must mean they do ranged attacks. But actually, the word ranger is originally the past tense of the word “ringer”, so they’re the guy who you temporarily brought into your party to win some bet, but then they stuck around afterwards and became a permanent member.

      • BillyClark@piefed.socialEnglish
        101·
        4 hours ago

        You don’t need to look up any etymology because the word “ringer” is plainly a noun and so it doesn’t have a past tense. I really thought the joke was so obvious that it wouldn’t need any explanation, especially when posting to a memes community that would be expecting jokes.

        • varden@lemmy.world
          10·
          4 hours ago

          Yeah I was surprised to see the down votes, that was some top notch shitposting

          • BillyClark@piefed.socialEnglish
            3·
            4 hours ago

            I think that if you post anything remotely clever, it all depends on the first vote. If the first vote is an upvote, everybody will look at it as if it might be clever, because it’s upvoted. If the first vote is a downvote, everybody expects it to be stupid.

            I think that’s one of the reasons why Reddit had a feature that would hide votes for a while, because that first vote is so powerful.

        • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
          4·
          4 hours ago

          I really thought the joke was so obvious that it wouldn’t need any explanation

          Poe’s Law, friend.